The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

This is the story of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country. The Path to Power reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and ambition that set LBJ apart. It follows him from the Hill Country to New Deal Washington, from his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, at age 31, of the national power for which he hungered.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.

Truman

Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation. The life and times of the 33rd president of the United States, Truman provides a deeply moving look at an extraordinary, singular American.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades", now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important figure in American history, who never attained the presidency, but who had a far more lasting impact than many who did.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer’s monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the 20th century’s blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of a vital and enduring classic.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

We’ve all had the experience of reading about a bloody war or shocking crime and asking, “What is the world coming to?” But we seldom ask, “How bad was the world in the past?” In this startling new book, the best-selling cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the world of the past was much worse. In fact, we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence.

Avid Reader: A Life

After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon & Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other best sellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and John le Carré - not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the Earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism?

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King

When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans 69 years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, banana hauler, dockside hustler, and plantation owner. He battled and conquered the United Fruit Company, becoming a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures.

Washington: A Life

In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. This crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company's early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world's most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

Napoleon: A Life

Andrew Roberts' Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine.

World Order

Henry Kissinger has traveled the world, advised presidents, and been a close observer and participant in the central foreign policy events of our era. Now he offers his analysis of the twenty first century's ultimate challenge: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historic perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.

Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939

For all the literature about Adolf Hitler, there have been just four seminal biographies; this is the fifth, a landmark work that sheds important new light on Hitler himself. Drawing on previously unseen papers and a wealth of recent scholarly research, Volker Ullrich reveals the man behind the public persona, from Hitler's childhood, to his failures as a young man in Vienna, to his experiences during the First World War, to his rise as a far-right party leader.

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

In The First Tycoon, Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore's personal life. It is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man. Vanderbilt, Stiles shows, embraced the philosophy of the Jacksonian Democrats and withstood attacks by his conservative enemies for being too competitive. He was a visionary who pioneered business models.

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

This monumental book tells the enthralling story of one of the greatest accomplishments in our nation's history, the building of what was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Brooklyn Bridge rose out of the expansive era following the Civil War, when Americans believed all things were possible.

Wilson

A hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson - the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the 28th President. This is not just Wilson the icon - but Wilson the man.

The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family

Bankers, philanthropists, scholars, socialites, artists, and politicians, the Warburgs stood at the pinnacle of German (and, later, German American) Jewry. They forged economic dynasties, built mansions and estates, assembled libraries, endowed charities, and advised a German kaiser and two American presidents. But their very success made the Warburgs lightning rods for anti-Semitism, and their sense of patriotism became increasingly dangerous in a Germany that had declared Jews the enemy.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans

Plutarch (c. AD 46-AD 120) was born to a prominent family in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, about 20 miles east of Delphi in the region known as Boeotia. His best known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life as well as four unpaired single lives.

Publisher's Summary

For the sheer magnitude, depth and authority of its revelations, The Power Broker stands alone - a huge and galvanizing biography revealing not only the virtually unknown saga of one man's incredible accumulation of power, but the hidden story of the shaping (and mis-shaping) of New York through the past half-century.

Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders have known: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of our time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens - the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses - and brings to light a bonanza of vital new information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), and about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay, and Nelson Rockefeller.

But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man - an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives. We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches - and then ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the accumulation of power became an end in itself.

Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He was held in fear - his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed.

Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as "Triborough" - a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses - an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city's political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions of dollars' worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time - without ever having been elected to any office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system.

Robert Moses held power in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman, and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O'Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner, and Lindsay. He personally conceived and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars - he was undoubtedly America's greatest builder.

This is how he built and dominated New York - before, finally, he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and of his power (by Nelson Rockefeller). But his work, and his will, had been done.

What the Critics Say

"Surely the greatest book ever written about a city." (David Halberstam)

"A masterpiece of American reporting. It's more than the story of a tragic figure or the exploration of the unknown politics of our time. It's an elegantly written and enthralling work of art." (Theodore H. White)

"The most absorbing, detailed, instructive, provocative book ever published about the making and raping of modern New York City and environs and the man who did it, about the hidden plumbing of New York City and State politics over the last half-century, about the force of personality and the nature of political power in a democracy. A monumental work, a political biography and political history of the first magnitude." (Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York)

This is such an amazing listening experience! If this was fiction you would say it was way too far fetched. Truth is so much stranger. Of my 300 audible books this is in the top 5. For those of you who have been lucky enough to read.. Master of the Senate.. this is the book end for that fab series on lyndon johnson. It was robert caros purpose to expose the workings of power on the local and national level, hence this award winning masterpiece of research and writing, taking almost 10 years to write, AND the lyndon johnson series, the last of which were still waiting for impatiently. I learned so much about power, politics and how the world really works by reading caros masterpieces. If you dont like long books- Be forewarned it is long, really long! I wouldnt cut a single word out of it though. It was actually been cut and edited back to fit in a paperback form. A must read, as far as I'm concerned

Robert Moses is a classic example of the enigmatic political giant. Simultaneously, a genius and heartless dictator, it is difficult for me to make up my mind about his true value. The book is spectacular in portraying both his unbelievable accomplishments and the heartless manner in which he achieved them. Although he did build many public works, it appears that these parkways, expressways and bridges, although visually monumental, were ultimately damaging to the healthy growth of New York City. It’s clear that he built all of these structures for the facilitation of the automobile. His total dedication to the automobile, his genius and his stubbornness are aptly portrayed in one small vignette: When he designed and constructed all of the Parkways in New York, he made all of the bridges that crossed them, less than eleven feet of clearance. He acknowledged that this would prevent the passage of any busses. This has prevented the use of these Parkways for public transportation and would have helped reduced traffic congestion. It’s clear that he wanted visible monuments to himself because he refused to have any tunnels constructed. His solution to traffic congestion caused by his bridges was to build more bridges even though the evidence was that bridges were the cause of the problem not the solution. Had he spent one tenth the money and effort on public transportation, the horrible traffic congestion and urban sprawl that resulted would have been eliminated. As a study in the attainment in power, this book is superb and is easily on the same level with Machiavelli’s, “The Prince”. Although Moses achieved so much, it is hard to like a man who was so arrogant and condescending to everyone. He was the living example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. One strange omission was the sage of the Brooklyn Dodgers. As a Brooklyn Dodger fan, I was disappointed that Caro didn’t point out that Moses singlehandedly forced the Dodgers to move to California. This is a great book and one that is both educational and exciting.

Sound over the top? Its not. This is that oh so rare super-book that leaves you gasping at its unimaginable stupendednes . Doubt it? check out its amazon ratings or try to find an award it hasnt won. You may recognize Caro from his masterful Lyndon Johnson multi-book bio which includes MASTER OF THE SENATE. or his just released volume of said- titled The Passage Of Power

You may not have heard of Robert Moses before but once you read this you'll wonder how thats possible ! I really don't know what else to say other than its a masterpiece that's not to be missed and its in the top 5 of my 900 titles. Very long book but worth every word! Well narrated and a MUST READ if there ever was one.

OH hbo is making a mini series of this book that should be coming out in a year or 2

A story of an idealist, Robert Moses, who becomes jaded and calloused by the system, who learns to work the system to gain power, and who then proceeds to collect more and more power over his long career. This power corrupts him quickly and completely. You will despise the man and his methods while being fascinated by his cleverness. I debated on whether to give this excellent book 4 or 5 stars, and I only opted for the lower rating because of the length. Moses stayed in power for over 40 years. and there was plenty of material for Caro to write about. After a while, the incidences and conflicts become a bit repetitive. I think It would have held my undivided attention better if some of the repeated stories had been cataloged but not told in their entirety. Caro tells the stories masterfully, and some may wish he related even more. I would have preferred a few less.

If you grew up in the New York area, as I did, whether you've even heard of him or not, Robert Moses had a dramatic impact on your life. Virtually every highway in NY and Long Island is where it is because Moses said it should be and most parks are either there because of Moses or look that way they do because of him.

Moses was a controversial figure, to be sure, and Caro pulls no punches in criticizing him thoroughly and harshly in many cases (a Moses sympathizer might argue that the entire book is one long hit piece). But the book also brilliantly chronicles the story of one of the great bureaucrats in the world history; a man who simply know how to get things done and get them done his way, come Hell or high water. Elliot Spitzer once said that if a Moses biography would be written today, it would be entitled

What did you like best about this story?

The way Caro traces the development of Moses' personality from young good government idealist to power-obsessed king of his own feifdom.

Which scene was your favorite?

The confrontation with Wagner on inauguration day over the appointment to the city planning board summed up Moses in a single incident.You could hate the man and have more power than the man, but you still couldn't resist doing what he ordered you to do.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This is not really a funny or sad book, though some of the anecdotes are pretty funny.

Where does The Power Broker rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Top 3. Quite simply the greatest combined work of public administration, urban planning, political biography, and big city politics ever. For any young man or woman who is considering a career in public service, read this first. It is superior to any single graduate course in public administration of political science, and provides an important tutorial on how the real world works. The audio version is wonderful

What other book might you compare The Power Broker to and why?

Caro's LBJ series is the only serious competitor in the field of 20th century political biography.

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

Spoiler alert; one example of the power of Robert Moses was how he was able to push around Governor and then President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I was born on Long Island in the year after Nelson Rockefeller finally brought to an end Robert Moses' decades of almost unfathomable power. I grew up in the landscape and society he did so much to create: amid his roads and his parks, and the suburban sprawl and ennui they made possible (indeed inevitable). My forbears were the poor Irish who came over to work for the rich Barons whom he fought, defeated, and later allied with. My family's upward mobility was won largely through the construction trades that his projects bankrolled and shaped. Hecksher State Park, Jones Beach, the Southern State Parkway, the Long Island Expressway, the Long Island Railroad that he nearly killed – these shaped my youth; they helped shape me, and millions of others of my generation and our successors.

I never quite understood how and why my society came to be this way until I finally tackled Caro's masterful biography cum history. I'd tried and failed before to read it, but it wasn't until I tried this wonderful audio version that I was able to absorb the whole of it. Robertson Dean's reading is a bit deliberate at times – I was grateful for Audible's Narration Speed feature, and listened to much of it at 1.25 times normal – but he does wonderful work in navigating Caro's sometimes dense prose, especially in the long exegeses of urban planning, legal niceties, economics, natural history, engineering, and on and on, which are crucial to understanding Moses' methods and impact.

Not that Caro neglects the human element. Indeed, the character portraits of figures like Fiorello LaGuardia, Joseph Papp, the dogged reporters who did so much to cut Moses' image down to size in the '50s and '60s, and especially of the criminally neglected Al Smith, are each worth the price of admission.

He's equally thorough and insightful in his portrayal of the wider society: the elites who Moses fought and later controlled, the neighborhoods he ended up destroying, and especially the press he played like a cheap fiddle (the New York Times especially does not come out of this book smelling too rosy).

I only wish Caro had come back to this subject in succeeding decades and brought his intrepid scholarship and insight to the history of post-Moses era; but he chose instead to spend the next 40+ years on LBJ. After experiencing this amazing more-than-biography, I look forward to tackling that even larger opus, probably with Audible's help.

In the Jewish religion on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement,there is a reckoning. All of your good deeds are written down and the all of the bad deeds. they are placed on a scale and you are so judged. This book is Robert Moses' day or reckoning. All of the good deeds and bad deeds are recorded over more than 66 hours of audio and judged by Robert Caro, master biographer. In the process we learn as much about Robert Caro and his values as Robert Moses. Mr. Caro is able to make the most mundane traffic planning commitee meetings into Shakesperian drama and power struggles. And there are a lifetime of planning and building documented here. In fact, we learn very little of Robert Moses personal life, aside from the fact he was mean to his older brother Paul and cheated him out of his birthright.On the other hand we learn about all of the power struggles and maneuvering that went into the planning and building of Jones Beach and the development of Long Island. We learn of Moses ability to drive a stake and take possession of homes, lands and other people's ideas to achieve his goal of parks and public works. How he would sell his soul to the devil for power. How he utilized public resources and facilites fro his own devices.And how he knowingly displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, unnecessarily for his title one projects and super highways and bridges.Along the waty we learn everything there is to know about New York politics and power struggles, inclusive of the years 1920 to 1970. Including, Alfred Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, Herman Lehman, Fiorello Laguardia, Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Wagner and John Lindsay.Mr .Caro has invested 10 years of his life into investigating and interviewing every one involved with at least 82 years of Mr. Moses 91 year life. Even after listening to the entire book it is difficult to know how to judge Mr. Moses. Almost no one else in the History of the world had such single mindedness and drive to acquire power through bulilding parks, bridges and roads, rather than by obtaining high offices or fighting wars. As Mr. Caro points out there is no comparable person in recorded history. This is by far the most edifying book I have ever read, and I would say the best book I have listened to or read. I guess I will have to listen to the Lyndon Johnson series to fill the void in my life.

? do non-fiction books over 1,000 pages normally intimidate you ? do you ever wonder why NYC can be such a dehumanizing and grim place? do you every ask whose fingerprints are all over the structure of the city

robert caro has written an exhaustive book to try to answer those questionsrobert moses was truly a perfect and hard reflection of the character of NYChis strengths, energy, weaknesses, abilities and arrogance were those of his city

moses' parents were not starving immigrants / they were jewish merchantsthe economic climate in NYC, after the american civil war, was to their likingthey prospered in this new land and expected their son to do the same

from the moses' perspective, a life in civil service was not a path to richesbut it delivered something even more precious; control over the lives of othersit is stunning how well moses achieved that goal, without ever winning an election

as you'd expect it's a sad personal story / the power hungry aren't a happy bunchbut now when i visit NYC, the roads and bridges and tunnels have a new meaningin the layout of the city, for good and for bad, i now see the imprint of one man

As an historian, Robert Caro is comprehensive to a fault. From this exhaustive biography of Robert Moses to his multi-volume encyclopedia of the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Caro has shown an aptitude for assembling historical detail. And even for writing it down in relatively accessible, popular prose.

But in my opinion, the real achievement of a great biographer is to sift through the welter of detail that make up the subject’s life, cull out the inconsequential minutiae, and distill the crucial material into an epiphany that illuminates the person’s life and explains the impact that it has had on ours.

Robert Caro is capable of such biographical alchemy when he wants to be. In the introduction to this book, he does a good job of summarizing who Moses was, why he was important, and what was, or is, the essential fraudulence that mars his otherwise monumental life’s work. But once you start into the body of the book, Caro’s compulsion for detail, his inability to exscind trivia, wear heavily upon the reader’s patience.

In the end, I believe that half the book could have been twice as compelling; If Caro had been willing to do the job of discriminating between fact and substance, and select the quintessence of Moses’ life from the quotidian episodes that make up every human life.